


The First Time

by RedKitsune



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gun Violence, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, References to Child Trafficking, post battle emotions, the first kill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-19 04:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22105183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedKitsune/pseuds/RedKitsune
Summary: Nicci had begged to be allowed on her first field mission. How hard was it to stick to the plan? When things go sideways, she's got to deal with the emotional and mental cost of being in the field. Will she suffer in silence or will she allow her mission leader and boyfriend, Clint Barton, to hold her as she heals?
Relationships: Clint Barton/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	The First Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot for @avengerscompound‘s Take A Line Challenge on Tumblr. I tend to be far too shy to interact with many of the big writers around here but I just want to say Thank You for the endless amount of reading materials you’ve given. 
> 
> Warnings: Canon typical violence, mental/emotional trauma, death, gun violence, referenced child trafficking. 
> 
> Rating: Teen
> 
> pairing: Clint x ofc

Bullets flew by her, hitting the wall behind her. Chips of brick and stone fractured and stabbed against her neck. It had been close, far too close. This was a mistake. It was all a mistake but even that thought was fractured as it flew through her racing mind.

She had to get across the room. She had to get to where they had the kids. She had to save them.

In her ear, her boyfriend Clint and Natasha were screaming. Orders were being issued and frankly, she was ignoring them all. Later, she would be punished for this, written up for it but right now, it didn’t matter. What mattered right now was those kids that were being bought and sold right in front of her. The plan be damned, she wouldn’t allow any of them to go through another day being forced to clean and slave for others.

Clint had to beg to be placed as lead on this mission. She had to push and push to earn her place on this mission. It wasn’t her first field mission but it was her first high stake mission and she was blowing it. But she couldn’t not do anything. So what if they never put her back in the field.

Before she could figure out what her next move was, she found herself looking at the back of a burly man. It felt like each heartbeat was at risk of bursting her chest open. The man held a gun and was yelling words at children, ushering them out of a back door.

They were taking the kids. If they took the kids, there was a chance that Shield wouldn’t be able to locate them before they were sold. The man slapped a small girl, she had to have been under five years old. The tiny body hit the ground.

She couldn’t hear the voices screaming in her ear piece. If asked, she couldn’t begin to say when she pulled her gun. She had no memory of leveling it. When the brittle crack of the gunshot filled the air, she was as surprised as everyone else.

Her hands ached with the recoil. The way a gunshot impact hits a human body was very different in reality than what she had seen in movies. There was a small burst of red as his neck came apart and then, that was it. He wasn’t thrown back. He simply dropped.

Children screamed. Clint yelled orders. Natasha lectured Clint.

She aimed her gun as another man rushed to the children and without thought, she pulled the trigger. Another brittle crack filled the air and another lifeless body hit the ground. The only sound that registered was the sound of her gun and the sound of the bodies falling.

Blood trickled down her cheek but she paid it no mind. Again and again, she took aim and fired. This wasn’t how the mission was planned. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how things went.

“Nicci?” A voice called and a hand settled on her shoulder.

She jerked, eyes wide and stumbled back a few steps. The gun hit the arm of the person behind her, bashing against their arm. The man cursed but she couldn’t hear it over the sound of her blood rushing in her ears and the crying of children. Without thought. She raised the gun while alarm bells dimly roared in the back of her mind and she pulled the trigger.

There was a hollow click. She pulled it again but there was again only a hollow click. The man reached out, yanking the gun from her hands. She couldn’t die here. She couldn’t die now. She needed to make sure those kids were safe. Protected. She needed to-

The man grabbed her wrists as she struck out at the man, dressed in black. He grabbed her and held firm but otherwise did not move as she struggled. Panic welled in her, eating into the rage that had been fueling her.

When she moved to kick him, he used her momentum to spin her around. Her back was only to him for a split second but he didn’t give her a chance to round on him. In the space of a heartbeat, his arms were around her and his large hands wrapped around her wrists. He held her tight as she bucked against him, doing everything she could to work herself free.

It was no use though. With the panic racing through her mind and the flood of adrenaline, her training was carried away.

“I’ve got you. You’re okay.” The man cooed.

The man. That voice. Clint. She’d tried to shoot Clint. She tried to shoot the man she loved. If she had any bullets left in her gun, he’d be dead and it would be her fault.

Everything clicked into place and she stilled. The world seemed too sharp. The colors were too vivid. The weight of his arms around her felt crushing as her eyes darted around.

Blood. Bodies. Death. Screaming. Crying children. Noise.

She wanted to vomit.

Natasha was ushering children out through where they had come in. In her ear, she could hear transport was going to be out front within a few minutes. She looked pointedly at Clint and Nicci could feel him nod firmly behind her, his cheek moving against her hair.

Her knees gave out. If not for Clint’s arms around her, she would have fallen to the ground. He lowered her slowly. It dawned on her many of the bodies were her doing. She’d killed them.

“What happened?” Clint asked and she couldn’t give voice to the answer. Instead, she twisted and clung to him and cried until the world went dark.

~~~~~<3

It was late. She sat in the dusty bed of the one room apartment they had been squatting in. Tomorrow, they would leave. Tonight however, Clint was taking his blows from his superiors. He’d probably be hearing about how sideways their mission had gone for at least another hour.

Natasha was likely at his side. Nicci could see them through the ripped up drapes that covered the window. They did their business on the fire escape so that she had space and peace to rest.

Clint ordered her to rest and for a while, she tried. Since she couldn’t sleep, she should have been out there with them, taking the blame and owning up to her mistakes. She couldn’t do that, though. It rolled in her gut, knowing that she was too much of a coward to do own up at them.

With every ounce of care she could manage, she stood up from the bed and moved through the room silently. Unsure of where she was going to go or what she was going to do, she slipped Clint’s hoodie over her. It draped down, covering the tank top she wore and hanging halfway down her thighs. It was long, even on him.

His scent enveloped her, offering her troubled mind some slight comfort as she laced up her heavy boots. For a moment, she considered pulling her waves back but instead she just wrapped her hand around the doorknob.

She wondered without much thought to where she was going. She made her way up the stairs at the end of the hall, climbing flight after flight as she tired to leave the cursed image of bodies on the ground behind her.

Faster and faster, she climbed. Still, the memory of what had happened that day, of what she had done that day was hot on her heels. By the time she crashed through the heavy metal door leading to the roof, she was sprinting. It closed behind her and she didn’t give it a thought.

The cold air felt like needles on her cheeks but she deserved the pain. White puffs of air rose from her mouth and nose with each hurried breath. The air stung her lungs but she deserved that too. Jean clad legs carried her to the edge. A naked palm braced against the rough stone of the roof as she swung her legs over the edge. The stone was cold under her as she sat down hard.

The frost and ice melted into her jeans but she ignored it. Her mind ran away with her, not that it had really been with her for most of the night. Tears welled in her eyes but she fought them back. She had no right to cry.

Nicci was always a woman who believed in justice. Sure, the system had it’s faults, sure it was often cracked in places but at the end of the day, it worked well enough. And she was a part of that system. There were laws, rules to obey. A system of delivering justice.

Yet, she had worked outside of that. She had taken the law into her own hands. She acted as judge, jury and executioner. There was no reason why they had to die. As much as she tried, she couldn’t remember why she took that first shot. Why did she go for a kill shot? She couldn’t remember.

It wasn’t just one person. It wasn’t just one life. God, how many did she kill? At least four, perhaps more. Did they have families? Were all of their crimes worthy of death? Did they get off easy, not being sent through the justice system.

“Careful, the fall would be nasty. Don’t slip off. That’d be a lot of paperwork.”

“And I’ve given you enough of a headache for one mission.” Nicci didn’t even bother to look at him. “How much trouble are we in because of me?”

He let out a heavy sigh as he sat down next to her. “Not as much as you seem to think.”

“That’s good.”

“Talk to me, Nicci.” He bumped his shoulder softly into hers but she still wouldn’t look at him. It was a stab to his heart but he put that hurt away. It wasn’t about him, right now. “Was today your first…”

“Yep.” Large fingers laced through hers.

“Talk to me Nicc.” Squeezing her hand, he refused to let her run away from this.

“What if,” She started, unsure if she wanted to let the thoughts and feelings out of the box she was trying so desperately to shove them into.

He waited patiently. That was what she had fallen in love with first. His quiet patience was something unexpected from someone who was a bundle of energy and always moving.

“What if they didn’t have to die?” She whispered. “What if, what if I killed people that should have lived? It wasn’t my call. It wasn’t my job.”

“You can’t go there.” She didn’t really hear his voice.

“It wasn’t my job. It wasn’t my call. Why did I do it? Am I any better than them?”

He was silent for a moment as her words were strangled off my the tension in her heart. He held her hand as a lump formed in her throat. He so badly wanted to fix this for her but he couldn’t. This was something she had to work through on her own.

“Nicci.” He waited, squeezing her hand until she finally looked up to him and the blue of his eyes captured her. They were stormy and so uniquely his. “Don’t go there.”

“Clint.”

“No.” The strength in his voice stilled her words. “Once you’re in that place, you just… hate yourself so much that.. you can’t imagine how anyone could ever not hate you… I know, because I’ve been there. You did what you did but they were bad people and kids were in danger. You did what you felt like you had to.”

“But I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to keep going.”  
“Why? Why did you start?”

“I don’t remember.” She admitted. It made her a liability. She’d never be allowed on a high risk mission again.

“You got close- Closer than I wanted you to get. Closer than you should have been but we didn’t have a clear line of sight. You were right, we needed to have a better view of what was going on. I didn’t want you to go alone and tried to follow but I couldn’t fit through the gap you wiggled through. When I tried again, I knocked a paint can over. That started everything. It snowballed into a firefight. You did- God, you did everything right but you were never trained to be at the head of a firefight.”

“I-”

Clint pulled her into his arms. The weight of his embrace shattered the box she had been trying to keep her emotions in. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she clung to him. He rubbed her back and whispered soft words of comfort into the crown of her head. If the strands of blonde bothered him, he didn’t show it.

“We leave tomorrow. As soon as we land again, they’ll have a therapist meet us.”

“Clint- no, I don’t-”

“You do.” There was no judgment in his voice. “It’s standard procedure after any mission that results in deaths- the whole team gets mandatory therapy.”

“Oh.”

Clint let her out of his arms and stood, ignoring the way his knee popped. “Let’s go inside? We can wrap up in blankets and get cozy. Drive Nat a little insane.”

“Okay.” With his help, she stood.

Her legs were stiff and cold but she was only just now feeling it. As they made it toward the door, he never let go of her hand. He was well aware of what a fragile place she was in. There was nothing as shattering as the first kill. He had to suffer through his alone. There was no way in hell he would let her go through it alone.

There was a thump when he wrapped his hands around the door handle and pulled. It moved only enough to make the sound yet he tried again. And again.

“It’s a one way exit.” Nicci whispered. She hadn’t thought to check when she came out onto the roof. She honestly didn’t care if she could get back in at the time. Clearly, Clint didn’t think to check either.

“Awww, shit.” His words broke her. Or perhaps, they put a few of her broken pieces together again as she doubled over, laughing far harder than she expected.

“Better call Nat to save us.” She could hardly get the words out as she tried to control her laughter. He groped his pockets with an increasingly worried look in his face.

“I forgot my coms.”

“Awww, shit.” This time it was Nicci’s turn to say what was very likely Clint Barton’s catch phrase. “Nat will find us right?”

Their eyes locked and another fragment of her heart slipped into place. A smile bloomed on their face and they laughed together. “Eventually.”


End file.
